22-III-2023.
First day at Čankovo this year. Apricots, finally, in nice blossom. Of theft, all shovels except the crummiest one, spades, hoes, pitchforks, and my best spade/shovel, that I bought in Subotica in 2015, and had a carpenter do me an ashen handle a pedalj longer than normal. As the cherry (or was it cherry?) on top, her coffee cup. And they dug out both peony bushes (!).
Found why the phone's camera takes no shots - out of three postprocesses churning jpegs out of dngs, two don't work. Picked the simplest, it works but now it's too green. Someone on the forum found a trick how to iron that out, some more postprocessing. Not that I don't understand the code - it's all shell scripts - but okay, I'll do as they say.
On 25th Jan called on skype, just like that, so we talked at length. Firriver now has some 60 people, new important customer is a huge belgian clinic... glad that I'm not there :). Feds is developing in a good direction, from a registering tool, it's becoming a tool to run the process. He did a lot to it in these three years, and it looks good. Said they were paying the Manchester server some 20000€ a month (!) and they're switching to something else now, much better.
we finally all got into the van, it sparked on first try, and went straight to banatskakuća. They had a daća there, seems to be the year after the funeral, so the company was in good mood, not quite laughing out loud but there were serene faces, smiles and lots of noise. By the time Lena and Milan came they already dispersed, so we could have our fill of talk. And so we celebrated Raja's twelfth birthday. Then we went downtown, bought two pieces of three kinds of cake, „panorama... um, panama cake“ „panama panorama, kraljevo valjevo*, all the same“. In this case it really is the same, as Prleski doesn't make them like he once did, this is without substance, all foam and filling, and even if it's still all natural, there's nothing to bite. She said it would have been better if she made one. And now we have eggs, we're getting three a day, and that's from the old ones, the young ones don't lay them yet. And Najka from detelina announced the next round for 29th (which arrived properly, on that day).
Twentyeighth. Incredible coreography. Ran the Joda to inspection, and got it to a carwash first. Put 200 dindžies into the slot, and saw it pull the banknote in, but no, an even stronger wind blew at that moment, pulled it out of the slot and lodged it into the narrow space, can barely insert a finger there, between the ad panel and the wall.
Had it practiced this for two hundred years, still wouldn't be able to pull it off again.
While I waited for inspection to take its course, spoke with Dragana, as usual. She's washing her windows. Found something for her leg, trying that third day now and says there's some slight effect already. Said fuck these doctors, they know what they know, but the old guard orthopedists know some tricks, specially around old wounds reawakening, that these never heard of. We set, tentatively, the next sitting for easter, i.e. the day after, and to bring eggs to have a knock, we never did that, should at least once. [the 'knock' is not quite that, there's a special verb 'tucati' which was almost never used for anything but boiled eggs, until the seventies, when all those Fest movies came about, and the translators didn't quite let the word 'fuck' through, but replaced it with this euphemism, so 'tucati' now also means 'fuck'; she's like that, if anything can have two meanings, it will]
On thirtyfirst, as they said they would, Magi and pLazić called when they were ready, and I took off on foot. Brought the eos70 and made a bunch of shots in the 300m between here and the Fabrika station, just to get the state of affairs on record. Because it keeps changing, quite fast, here Zvezdana is already washing the windows and planting the thujas aka cedars for the third time around the new apartments she built at the corner. And diagonally across, where they razed the little forest, the construction reached 2nd (3rd...) floor, with more terraces ahead. This one on picture is the convincingly ugliest in the area, but with some style to it. Đuđa's son-in-law had built a house across the street, and this one he bought for workshop, while his company was small. Then he built a car salon with apartment upstairs, there on bager, and sold both these houses. Now this one is remodeled, which lasts who knows how long - the scaffolding is there at least half a year, if not longer. It will look lame, if the scaffolding ever vanishes. [it did, within two weeks]
The gate, like a dozen others in the area, is by Zvezdana.
pLazić is touring the cemeteries, his parents and some aunts are buried here. I arrived at the parking of Bečkerek in time to have a cigarette, the usual anti-Murphy one (either I'll have a whole smoke undisturbed, or they will appear early and I won't wait long - win-win). They appeared right on cue, when I was halfway through the cigarette (works every time). We went to banatskakuća (in my case, again). At least we talked for as long as we wanted, the tavern was empty. And the čorba was excellent, same as the one of saturday. The gulaš, however was not same as, but the same one. Reheated... which was almost not much trouble, the čorba was almost enough. Magi got a worse deal, he had deer steak, cooked who knows when, and had belly trouble within half an hour. The tavern was empty, the cook wasn't there, only one waiter reheating whatever anyone orders...
Drove a round through the nearby budžinbulevar after that, one of his aunts lived there. Today it comes across as claustrophobic, it's all so snug and tight, even the street. Our townhouse in Virginia seemed to have a larger lot.
In other news, Go sent a shot of Neša drinking kokta. Stanley found it somewhere and bought a whole carton. Also wants to surprise Sam with it (Samir, the Bosnian).
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* Kraljevo and Valjevo are real cities, but this is used as „potaytoe, pohtahtaw“... even though this is funnier to me, it's not about pronouncing the same word differently, it's a different set of 50000 people.
Mentions: 13-IV-2023., bager, banatskaKuća, Bečkerek, budžinbulevar, Čankovo, čorba, daća, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), eos70, Fabrika station, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, kokta, Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), pedalj, pLazić, Prleski, Ryu (Raja), Stanley Berger, Zvezdana, in serbian